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HIGH PERFORMANCE POLYMER COMPOUNDS –
A NEW CLASS OF MATERIAL FOR HEAT EXCHANGERS
IN CORROSIVE ENVIRONMENTS
Authors: Dirk Moses a, Thomas Orth a, Patrick Mueller a,
a
Technoform Kunststoffprofile GmbH, Otto-Hahn-Straße 34, D-34253 Lohfelden,
Germany, Tel. +49 561 95839-85, Fax: +49 561 95839-21, email: [email protected]
Abstract
It is well known that metal is not the best choice in strongly corrosive environments.
Nevertheless, almost all main components for industrial heat exchanger applications
like air cooling, air filtration, gas condensation or liquid distillation are still made of
metal. This causes broadly known negative effects, such as frequent maintenance,
the need for expensive highly resistant metals or costly anti-corrosive surface
treatments.
In contrast to that, a wide range of technical plastics have a good chemical resistance
but their heat conductive properties are poor. Technoform Kunststoffprofile, specialist
in the extrusion of fibre-reinforced technical plastics, came up with a new solution.
The combination of an appropriate polymer with a high amount of heat conductive
fillers achieves the demanded properties of chemical resistance and good heat
transfer simultaneously. This allows Technoform to produce heat exchanger
components with this new class of material to substitute metal components in the
chemical industry.
Using seawater desalination as an example, this paper shows that the combination of
heat conductive filler and polymer, the special processing and surface modification
results in an overall heat transfer coefficient which is competitive to existing metal
tube applications. The better fouling resistance of polymer tubes, which was
confirmed in first tests, will be presented as well as further test results.
Going from this exemplification to general considerations, the versatile benefits of full
polymer heat exchanger components, also including structural parts, in the chemical
industry will be discussed.